Posted by
Steve Smith on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Fwd-Major-bug-called-Heartbleed-exposes-Internet-data-tp7585135p7585150.html
This
recent essay
by Astra Taylor, with an introduction written by Rebecca Solnit has
a decidedly feminist perspective. Given the huge asymmetry on our
own (FRIAM) demographic, I thought this article might be interesting
to some here.
She asserts that: “open” in no way means “equal.” "While the
Internet may create space for many voices, it also reflects and
often amplifies real-world inequities in striking ways."
Astra makes direct reference to the power-law-distributed nature of
web *traffic* with hubs and links which alludes to the general
consequences of preferential attachment networks, and other similar
systems known to yield power-law distributions (e.g. erosion
channels, etc.).
Despite my own allergic response to strong rhetoric where the "white
male" always plays the ultimate villain, I continue to be interested
in the topic of gender/racial inequality as a practical matter (I
have a wife, two daughters and a granddaughter, and my friends are
as likely to be hispanic or native american as lily white). In
parallel, I am also interested in the analysis of social networks as
dynamical systems, both in the activity registered on the network
and in the formation and evolution *of* the network.
Astra's point that the internet "reflects and amplifies" real-world
inequities was very poignant to me, and I think the core of the
point. The digital communication network adjusts various constants
regarding time, distance and cost-of-delivery in extreme ways, which
in turn can make otherwise relatively *stable* systems relatively
*unstable*, or at least out of the time-scales of the human
moderators who might have been acting as dynamic balancing elements
in the system.
It is not surprising that the WWW was often referred to as the Wild
Wild Web in the early days because it did offer many of the same
"freedoms" and "hazards" as the US western "frontier" of post Civil
War expansion across the continent.
I'm not a fan of regulation for it's own sake, nor of quotas, nor
censorship, or any of the other obvious "knee jerk" responses to
some of the consequences of the inequities which I think I agree
come with this kind of open-ness, but that is not to say that I like
the inequities even if they are superficially in my favor.
I'm curious if others here have ideas, opinions or other references
that discuss this progressively both as a social phenomenon and
perhaps in the abstract as dynamic network form and function?
- Steve
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